If it’s true that the deepest desires or our heart are planted by God, by the Divine, then who, I ask, are we to deny those desires?

Our desires are yet another way the Divine tries to get our attention.

Why is it so hard to say yes to those desires?

Is it fear? Ego? What others will think? How disruptive saying yes will be?

So many answers to that question.

And, once again, long distance hiking is a willing sage, paring us down to the essentials, "clearing us out for some new delight." Showing us how to access our simple desires (Pizza or burgers? Rest or keep going? Tent or shelter?). And showing us how to access our not so simple desires (keep up with friends or do my own thing?)

Dreams and desires strike me as pangs. Where my heart opens and constricts simultaneously. It opens because it recognized an opportunity to say yes to something wonderful. And it constricts with the fear of saying yes to what might initiate a change that will throw me off the course I’m secure in following.

Except, as storyteller Michael Meade so deftly noted, “A false sense of security is the only kind there is.”

Getting lost along your path is a part of finding the path you are meant to be on.

— Robin Sharma

We’ve been brainwashed into thinking we’re supposed to know where we’re going. To have a plan. To be taking consistent steps, even if they’re baby steps, to get closer to our goal of doing something epic.

Detours not allowed.

Keep moving forward.

Make progress.

I’ve said it myself…thru hikers are like sharks. Keep swimming or die. Such is real life, too

Getting lost isn’t supposed to be part of the program.

But I think we should allow abundant time for getting lost and going off trail.

I’ve found that getting lost is a great way to find parts of myself I didn’t know were missing.

Getting lost allows for:

Learning to rely on your inner compass.

Opening to the discoveries that await us when we’re in unknown territory and vulnerable.

Keep walking, though there’s no place to get to. Don’t try to see through the distances. That’s not for human beings. Move within, but don’t move the way fear makes you move.Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.Let the beauty we love be what we do.There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Keep Walking, by Jalal-al-Din Rumi

I remember when I was on the trail an impromptu poetry reading in the shelter in the town of Glasgow, Virginia. Cookie Monster shared Roll the Dice by Charles Bukowski.

Hike your own hike.

You hear that a lot on the trail.

I started my thru-hike with the intention of letting go of some of my habitual ways of meeting the world. I wanted to be more social. To learn to ask for help. To gain self-confidence. To learn what it means to hike my own hike.

Even though I'm generally pretty good at going my own way without undue influence from others.

I can still be easily influenced.

I’m susceptible to following.

Here come the pangs.

Not that there's anything wrong with following or letting others make the decisions for a while. It's only bad if, while following, you're feeling pangs that tell you it's time to go your own way.

Or if it becomes habitual.

But you can’t know one thing without knowing its opposite. You can’t know light without knowing darkness. You can’t know love without also knowing fear.

And you can’t know the joy of hiking your own hike without knowing the unease of not trusting yourself to know what’s best for you, to know what gives you life.

I learned how to hike my own hike the hard way, with an injury that took me off the trail and prevented me from completing the AT as a thru hike.

Learning to notice the signs.

But it wasn’t like there weren’t signs along the way.

Internal signs were there all along--getting annoyed; small disappointments adding up along the way (not taking a day in Harper’s Ferry or Salisbury, being rushed through a resupply, not allowing myself to take a nap or even stretch because I felt like I had to get the miles in).

External signs were there, too.

Mostly coming from other hikers, unbeknownst to them.

Pangs.

Things I saw them doing or heard them saying that made my heart catch a little.

Early Bird was committed to hiking alone so he could stop and look and watch the birds that tend to disappear when people are around.

Dylan stopped mid day at a shelter with a patio and lounge chairs. Called it quits for the day and was cooking up his rice and beans and committed to chilling there the rest of the afternoon. Or not. The choice was his and his alone.

Erica was hiking the Long Trail in Vermont. I overheard her tell her potential tramily, “Y’all go ahead. I’m just going to do my thing.” Then telling me how she’s taking her time and making sure to visit all the little Vermont villages along the trail.

1 Night Stand got his trail name because he steadfastly refused to adopt a trail family, hanging out with other hikers a night or two then moving on. At his own pace.

PANGS!

I don't have any regrets about staying with my tramily. I don't even have regrets about not finishing. (Because I get to go back!)

But now I get how vital it is to listen to pangs and trust my inner compass, to trust my Self to know what's best for me in spite of any fears my little self is tossing out there for chuckles.

I get how that's a good skill to have as a spiritual seeker.

And the good news is that now I get to go back and practice listening to those pangs and following where they lead.

Something I turn to because sitting on a zafu watching my breath doesn't work for me. My body fidgets and my mind goes berserk with imaginary debates where I always have the last word. Unlike in real life.

Sitting meditation is just another meal for my ego, which is fat enough and doesn't need any more feedings.

But hiking long distances with intention is an exercise in humility, forgiveness and trust...all strangers to the ego's M.O.

The ego doesn't understand what happens on a long hike.

It doesn't get...

Living simply and carrying all your worldly goods on your back (because it has been conditioned to think more is always better);

Stepping into the unknown (because it doesn't like surprises);

Accepting that you don't have all the answers and may need to ask for help sometimes (because it's a righteous know-it-all);

Welcoming hardships in the form of physical pain, dangerous weather and bears (because it likes to be comfortable. And safe).

Allowing and opening (because it's dedicated to forcing and pushing)

A Grand Canyon's worth of space for Spirit to flow

A long distance hike shakes us out of the habit of sleepwalking through life.

A long distance hike silences the ego through the novelty of the experience and allows the quiet voice of our own wisest self to speak and be heard.

A long distance hike cracks us open, a little more each day we're on the trail and away from our usual triggers, until there is a Grand Canyon's worth of space for spirit to flow through us.

A space too wide for the ego to cross easily.

Any long distance hike will open that space for spirit if that's what you crave.

Intentional Hiking, I've found, gets me there faster. For the rest of this week, I'll be sharing more practices you can bring with you on your hikes. More tools for excavating your own personal Grand Canyon where spirit flows.

Event Maps have the power to reconstruct a particular day for me more effectively than any other form of recording I’ve found....The aura of the day and place somehow clings to them with special pungency.

I always prefer my old journals that include sketches and drawings and diagrams over those that are strictly words.

Noticing what comes through

An important component of Intentional Hiking--hiking with the intention of connecting with your divine, creative self-- is documenting what comes through during the hikes.

It may be something intangible like an idea or the solution to a problem. Or it may be something tangible like corn dogs or making eye contact with a barred owl in a tree.

Either way, what comes through is a gift and worthy of being noted, remembered, revered.

How to keep track

I've decided to resurrect the practice of keeping a logbook and to make it a daily ritual, a practice that includes reviewing any notes, ideas, thoughts, scraps of overheard conversation, field notes (i.e. 4/30/18: trillium and iris blooming; indigo bunting; mama bear with three yearling cubs in Webb Cove).

April 30, 2018: Webb Cove. Too far away and bears too spread out to get all three yearling cubs on camera.

Another practice of visual documentation I've not mastered but that intrigues me is the idea of making an "Event Map."

"An Event Map is an actual map, in that it traces your route through a landscape, as you encounter it....An Event Map takes shape around a wandering line that mirrors your path, whether purposeful or erratic. Along it will appear symbols that mark the approximate site of an event, with at least a few words indicating what has happened, or is happening.

Looking back at an Event Map,...I can still unroll a whole string of vivid sense images from that day, many that aren't documented on the event map at all. All of these peripheral details, like the exact level of humidity, what I was wearing and which knapsack I carried at the time, certain fallen logs, the way voices sounded in that little valley and bits of conversation exchanged must be mysteriously encoded on these pages, though they reside in no particular drawing or phrase.

Event Maps have the power to reconstruct a particular day for me more effectively than any other form of recording I've found....The aura of the day and place somehow clings to them with special pungency."

YES!

You don't have to record ALL the things. Recording just a few of the things as they unfolded during the day brings back all the things later.

I want to make more of these event maps. So when I open my journal and follow the dotted line, I find the treasure that was that particular well-lived day.

Like this day, where I had ice cream for breakfast, refused to go on without swimming in the lake and had my finest Hiker Trash moment where I swam in my clothes then spread them over the picnic table to dry the clothes and myself in the sun, surrounded by a hundred of my best 4 year old friends.

Warning:

Peruse her work at your peril. She sets the bar so high for sketch journaling and nature journaling that I let her incredible talent stop me for years from developing my own sketching practice. I let my inner critic win when I listened to the voice that said "You'll never be that good." I think that voice is probably right; but so what? That shouldn't stop me from documenting my own journey, my own unique life that can only be lived through me. So STFU, inner critic! I'm sketching anyway.

Writers are the custodians of memory, and that’s what you must become if you want to leave some kind of record of your life…

— William Zinsser, How to Write a Memoir

Pay close attention.

Carry a notebook everywhere. Capture what strikes you as interesting in words or images.

Transfer those random interesting bits and bobs to your container, a logbook or index cards, where thoughts marinate and emerge reformed as new ideas, knowledge.

But how does the magic happen? How do we make the new connections that turn bits of information into knowledge or bobs of inspiration into art?

I mean, the stew doesn't stir itself.

Stir the pot by taking a long walk, preferably in nature--woods, beach, exposed ridge, your choice.

But if woods and beaches aren't available, that's okay if it's creative thinking you seek. A city walk will do the trick of fanning that creative flame, connecting those random ideas into something new.

What's not optional is the walking.

Nor, it seems, is the act of actually moving through space.

In other words, efficiency in the form of a treadmill won't stir the stew.

The magic is in the rhythmic movement, according to those Stanford researchers.

I've always known that walking works for my own creative impulses. (Glad to be backed up by science, now.)

What I've also known to be true (not yet studied, just another hunch on my part) is that we have the power to direct that creativity. To give it a job to do, whether it's to solve a problem, dream up an idea for a podcast, let a structure emerge for a new book or see a composition for a painting.

Those who are certain of the outcome can afford to wait and wait without anxiety.

— A Course in Miracles

There is a point in the classic telling of the Hero's Journey, (we can call it the Heroine's Journey), where the heroine crosses the threshold into the unknown, the place of mystery. She may have chosen to cross over into the mystery. Or she may have been pushed.

Either way, each day brings something new and she has no idea where her journey will take her.

She has no idea how long it will take. No idea how long she must reside in the not-knowing.

She has no idea what adventures await, though she's right to suspect there will be some things that will test her mettle and her resolve to continue. Annoying people. Cliff scrambles. Lightening. Tiny monsters with multiple legs, sometimes hairy.

The heroine has one choice to make on a moment by moment basis.

Choice #1:

To worry and stew and fret about being in the unknown. To submit to the anxiety that comes with not knowing, not being in control. To be overcome with questions that stick like bad John Denver songs in the mind and risk crowding out the small voice that, given time and space and wonder, eventually brings the answers.

"When will this be over? Where am I going? What's my purpose? What's the point? When will this change, work out, shift? WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BE DOING WITH MY LIFE?"

Or Choice #2:

To accept and feel what bubbles up from within--fear, anxiety, boredom, self-judgment, elation; then to keep putting one foot in front of the other and stay present to the moment by moment wonders that are unfolding.

To be okay with slowing down, observing what's there, getting quiet and accepting where we are.

To be okay with not always knowing, with not being in control, with not being sure.

And to trust our inner compass enough to know we will get there even when we're not sure where "there" is.